Fatigue life prediction for boom structure of concrete pump truck

Abstract Frequent premature fatigue failure of construction machinery has spurred the demand for fatigue life prediction of such equipment. In this study, fatigue cracks were investigated in a concrete pump truck boom typically a high-strength steel plate welded box girder structure. The focus was two-tip corner cracks which frequently initiate at the weld toe between the top flange plate and the web plate because these are commonly observed in the field. A fatigue crack growth numerical approach for three-dimensional shell problems was proposed to simulate fatigue crack growth in cracked structures. Fatigue experiments were performed on a full-scale cracked boom to validate the effectiveness of this approach. The influence of the initial crack length was examined using the proposed approach. Numerical results revealed that variation in the initial crack length can affect the remaining fatigue life. For engineering convenience, an interpolation method was employed to determine the remaining fatigue life of a cracked boom with an arbitrary initial crack length. The comparisons between interpolation and numerical results demonstrate that the interpolation method can be used to guide repair decisions with reasonable precision.